Packaging design agency

What a packaging design agency does that a template cannot

You can generate a label in a browser in twenty minutes. What you cannot generate is the decision about which three words go biggest, or whether the category expects a white background so strongly that going dark reads as a different product entirely.

The other half of the job is physical. A design that looks excellent flat can fail once it is folded, because the fold lands across a word. A color approved on a laptop can come back from the press washed out, and by then the run is done.

How a packaging project runs

The order matters more here than in most disciplines, because a mistake caught late is a mistake that costs a print run.

• Category and constraints. What the shelf looks like now, what the legal copy must include, and what the manufacturer can actually produce. Mandatory information eats more space than anyone plans for, and week one is a much better time to discover that than artwork stage.
• Structure and dieline. Format, material and the flat plan. If there is an existing dieline from your converter we work to it, and if there is not, this gets resolved before any visual work starts.
• Concept. Usually two or three directions, presented with the reasoning and mocked up in context rather than floating on a white background, because packaging judged in isolation always flatters itself.
• Artwork and prepress. Production files built to the printer specification: color separations, bleed, varnish and foil layers, barcodes checked, text at sizes that will survive the process.
• Press. We review proofs, and for anything where color is critical we would rather be looking at the first sheets than trusting a PDF.

Wine labels, with the rules that come attached

Wine is a category where the label does almost all of the selling, and where the constraints are unusually tight. Mandatory text, alcohol content, allergen statements and appellation rules take up space before a single design decision gets made, and they vary by market.

Working with wine label designers rather than a printing template mostly buys you two things. Judgment about where the bottle sits in its category, which is a conversation about price expectation more than aesthetics. And material decisions: uncoated versus coated paper, embossing, foil, and how each of those reacts to condensation on a bottle that comes out of an ice bucket.

Spirits and bottles, where an alcohol packaging design agency earns it

The bottle is usually fixed and expensive to retool, so the label, the closure and the outer carton carry the whole positioning. On a shelf full of brands shouting heritage at each other, restraint tends to read as the more expensive choice.

We have designed packaging for a premium gin brand in this category. We design the whole object, not just the front label: label, closure and outer carton carrying one brand, with the compliance for each market resolved in the final artwork rather than patched at the printer. The closest case in the portfolio is the poster campaign and art direction for Cervezas Victoria.

Food branding agency work, not only the pack

Food projects usually start before the packaging. The name, the tone and the promise on the front decide what the pack has to carry, and doing it in the other order produces a handsome box that says nothing.

That includes food packaging for a mass market cocoa brand. We build food packaging as a range from day one, with substrates, print methods and cost per unit decided before the first visual, so the design survives the production line. A real example in the portfolio: the packaging for Tomorrow, a mushroom snack brand.

Sustainability, when it is real

Requests for sustainable packaging arrive constantly and split into two kinds. One is a genuine constraint: mono material so the thing can be recycled, less ink coverage, a structure that removes a component. The other is a green looking design on packaging exactly as complicated as before, and we will tell you which one you are asking for.

How the studio works, and where from

Eje Creativo works from Barcelona, Miami and London, by appointment rather than from an open door office. Packaging runs well this way because the milestones are concrete: dieline approved, direction chosen, artwork signed off, proof approved.